92 UNITE© STATES. 



night more than forty inches of snow fell in that city 



and its environs, with a north-east wind; while five- 

 and-twenty miles inland it had not even rained, and 

 the wind was rather north- west, as several of the 

 newspapers observed. ^ 



When the south-east wind makes its appearance 

 in winter on the Atlantic coast, which happens par- 

 ticularly at the approach of the equinox, it some- 

 times produces temporary thaws, even as far as, 

 Canada, that have tht unpleasant effect of spoiling 

 the meat, stores of which are provided for five or six 

 months in cold countries as early as October. Far- 

 ther south these thaws treacherously deceive the 

 vegetative faculty, calling forth in January or Feb- 

 ruary those flowers, which should not appear till 

 after the equinox, and which the unfailing return of 

 frost inevitably destroys. 



Toward the equinoxes, more particularly the ver- 

 nal, the south-east wind produces short but violent 

 tempests, especially at the mouths of the Hudson and 

 Delaware, and in the bay of Chesapeak, The dura-, 

 tion of these is very commonly twelve hours; and 

 they have this singularity, that they exert their fury, 

 like a hurricane, on a limited space of ten or twenty, 

 leagues long and four or five broad, without the least 

 commotion being perceptible out o( this space. 



This violent irruption of a light hot wind is not 

 explicable by the common theory of specific gravi- 

 ties, since every other wind, is more cold and dense 

 than the south-east : we must therefore admit the 

 expansion of a considerable mass of this hot air, re- 

 pelling and driving away the colder air that sur- 

 rounds it; this impecuosity is occasioned, J)y .tv^o . 



